Moody, dark at times, hopeful in others, consistently clever, always witty indie-folk rock: a stunning female perspective.

13 MP3 Songs
FOLK: Folk Pop, POP: Folky Pop



Details:
Haley Zalesky is a 20-year old singer-songwriter who grew up in a little smoke-stack city in Northern Ontario. Her life has always been coloured by music, and she's been colouring outside the lines, musically speaking since before she knew how to write. Haley's songwriting began as her own private project, a web of notes and chords held together by her whispering alto. Lyrics filled margins in school notebooks, and loose pages lined dresser drawers. She hid away entire pieces done in careful, veiled verse, cherished but never shared or spoken of.

Haley started to take her writing more seriously as her skills developed, and varied experiences playing the open mic circuit in Toronto taught her a few lessons. She learned that the crowd is only as convinced as you are, and that sometimes if you let them hear you, a purple room full of bohemian locals will warmly urge you to play again. A year has passed since she first impressed those total strangers, and now the same girl has a fan following. Her witty, often sarcastic nature appears in her songs alongside honest admissions, contributing to a body of work that speaks powerfully about the sides of ourselves we donât tend to describe.

Truly a product of her Northern town, Haley has had only her musical heroes to learn from, but she has been a diligent student. Having become a seasoned professional at filling local coffee shops with friends and fans, she left Sudbury for Toronto once again in the fall of 2006. She carried with her a feeling of accomplishment and the master copy of her first album. Entitled Not the Queen, the record is a labour of love recorded over a four-hour period in a studio that could have passed for a sauna. Various works that served as a soundtrack to her observations, dreams, and sleep-deprived days quickly arranged themselves in a track list of thirteen honest, touching, and truly relatable folk-rock songs. Now sheâs lugging her guitar around the city, and listeners agree her voice gives her more years than sheâs got. Accustomed to pulling in an audience with her self-critical musings, she is ready to play out, whether or not she has to warm up her voice in the downstairs bathroom first.